Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom
Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom
The Gramophone Choice
Coupled with Nine Sacred Choruses. An Angel Crying
Corydon Singers / Matthew Best
Hyperion CDA66948 (75‘ · DDD · T/t) Buy from Amazon
Tchaikovsky’s liturgical settings have never quite caught the popular imagination which has followed Rachmaninov’s (his All-Night Vigil, at any rate). They are generally more inward, less concerned with the drama that marks Orthodox celebration than with the reflective centre which is another aspect. Rachmaninov can invite worship with a blaze of delight, setting ‘Pridite’; Tchaikovsky approaches the mystery more quietly. Yet there’s a range of emotion which emerges vividly in this admirable record of the Liturgy together with a group of the minor liturgical settings which he made at various times in his life. His ear for timbre never fails him. It’s at its most appealing, perhaps, in the lovely ‘Da ispravitsya’ for female trio and answering choir, beautifully sung here; he can also respond to the Orthodox tradition of rapid vocalisation, as in the Liturgy’s Creed and in the final ‘Blagosloven grady’ (in the West, the Benedictus). Anyone who still supposes that irregular, rapidly shifting rhythms were invented by Stravinsky should give an ear to his Russian sources, in folk poetry and music but also in the music of the Church.
Matthew Best’s Corydon Singers are old hands at Orthodox music and present these beautiful settings with a keen ear for their texture and ‘orchestration’. The recording was made in an (unnamed) ecclesiastical acoustic of suitable resonance, and sounds well.
